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GAC updates board; parkway progress made

Vehicles approach Monday morning at the intersection of Highway 7 and Highway 7 Spur (Gorge Road.) Federal highway funds for the current federal three-year funding cycle will make improvements to Highway 7 between Hot Springs and Fountain Lake. Work will be focused in the Fountain Lake School District area, including the intersection of highways 5/7. Hot Springs National Park superintendent Josie Fernandez told Tri-Lakes Metropolitan Planning Organization she does not favor any widening of Highway 7 in the Gulpha Gorge area to downtown Hot Springs, particularly near national park land, according to a GAC report. She favors the planned limited-access parkway as a way to reduce traffic through the national park. (Lewis Delavan photo)

GAC chair Jerry Yeric addresses the POA board of directors during the joint meeting this month. Joining him at the table are vice chair Gerald Allen (left) and member Lu Otto. (Lewis Delavan photo)

By LEWIS DELAVAN

Staff writer

Hot Springs Village Property Owners’ Association governmental affairs committee met jointly with the POA board of directors at the end of the board’s December work session.

GAC chair Jerry Yeric told the board the joint meeting was an outgrowth of last year’s self review by committees. The GAC will meet quarterly with the board to enhance communication.

Katherine Winslow outlined the history of Arkansas’ retirement and relocation efforts.

Legislation authorizing marketing for retirement and relocation was passed in 1995, but no funding was provided that year.

Two years later, the General Assembly allocated $250,000.

A 2003 legislative bill proposed creating a state division for retirement and relocation, but it wasn’t passed.

POA officials met with state officials in 2006 to promote retirement/relocation. Another funding attempt was made in the General Assembly in 2008.

This year, GAC members met with Gov. Mike Beebe, who seemed favorable to the ideas, she said.

Winslow and GAC member Jim Harlow later met with the state website’s developer in hopes of a larger retirement/relocation presence on Parks and Tourism’s website. An updated website is expected soon.

Harlow pointed out that retirement and relocation are not synonymous. Relocators plan to continue working after moving, and with the benefit of the Internet, are increasingly doing so at home, he said.

Harlow said Arkansas should increase its retirement/relocation efforts to compete with surrounding states.

Questioned by board director Frank Leeming whether the program would be better placed under the state’s economic development commission, Yeric said he’d spoken with state economic chief Grant Tennille, who told him Parks and Tourism is the right place.

One reason is that Parks and Tourism already advertises the state. Visitors who vacation in Arkansas might decide they’d like to live here, without ever having considered moving here before.

Board director Tom Bryant said he feels that if the governor is behind the state’s retirement/relocation efforts, it will succeed.

Bryant urged GAC members to talk to all the gubernatorial candidates about the need for a successful statewide program.

Next, Lu Otto outlined demographics research that he is coordinating. Otto said he’s not as interested in a specific number or group of numbers as he is in developing a system for gathering reliable, updated data about the Village, and for gleaning an understanding of what the data means.

“What’s the story behind those numbers?” he asked. “The numbers are important, but the story behind the numbers is where the potential is.”

For example, Otto said he’s found that the Village has some 93 percent of the number of senior citizens living in Garland County, and 167 percent of the number in Saline County. Otto said knowledge of such a large percentage of seniors could be valuable to a medical provider interested in expanding.

In Dick Breckon’s report on the Tri-Lakes Metropolitan Planning Organization, he said the group’s Nov. 21 meeting was very productive.

On the proposed 5.5-mile, $50 million limited-access parkway that would link the intersection of highways 5 and 7 to the eastern terminus of Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway, Breckon said all the county, Hot Springs and state transportation people attending the MPO meeting reaffirmed that the proposed bypass is the area’s top priority.

Breckson said Garland County and Hot Springs are working on a proposal to take over maintenance of local roads, presently maintained by the state, as an offset for the cost of the bypass.

Local officials are studying the 10-year cost as their contribution to the project and plan to submit the proposal to the state by the year’s end.

Breckon said Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Jose Fernandez told other planners she favors the proposed bypass as a means of reducing traffic through Gulpha Gorge and the historic Bathhouse Row.

The state transportation budget now has $10 million for improving Highway 7 between the 5/7 intersection and downtown. The MPO has endorsed using it in the Fountain Lake area to help reduce school congestion.

Breckon said the Whittington area residents group had been favoring using the $10 million in the Whittington area — but at the MPO meeting the Whittington residents endorsed the group’s position, with emphasis on the bypass connection to 5/7, as a means of relieving traffic through the Whittington area.

Fernandez also endorsed this position, Breckon said, because she does not want any widening of Highway 7 from the Gupha Gorge area to downtown, particularly near national park land.

Things are looking good for the bypass, Breckon said and it will hopefully become part of the 2016-19 surface transportation improvement plan.

For the proposed replacement of three first bridges on Danville road, the bridge closest to Highway 5 should be replaced next year, said GAC member Paul Pool. Garland County hopes to complete the replacement without having to close Danville Road. The other two bridges will be replaced in future years as funds become available.

GAC member John Land updated the board on Fountain Lake and Jessieville school districts. An estimated 217 of Fountain Lake’s 1,293 students live in the Village, with some 105 riding the school bus. An estimated 375 of Jessieville’s 893 students live in the Village, with 250 riding the bus.

Land said FL will open its pre-kindergarten program to all district children at no cost. The program has had 20 children in past years, but added a second section this year and now has 40. With some 100 children currently in kindergarten, it appears more pre-K sections could be added next year, he said.

In the chairman’s report, Yeric said GAC needs to closely monitor federal legislation on “payment in lieu of taxes,” for it directly impacts Garland County and the Village.

The payment reimburses counties that have federal land, as a way to replace lost real-property tax revenue.

During fiscal 2013, Garland County received $339,019, based on 161,576 acres of federal land. Seventy-five percent of these funds went directly to the Garland County road department. State government received $5.8 million payment in lieu of taxes in the same period, Yeric said.

GAC’s January meeting will be a planning meeting for GAC’s 2014 goals and objectives. It will meet at 8 a.m. Jan. 3 in the Ouachita Activities Building, Ponce de Leon Center.